Randomized experiments involving education interventions are typically implemented as cluster randomized trials, with schools serving as clusters. To design such a study, it is critical to understand the degree to which learning outcomes vary between versus within clusters (schools), specifically the intraclass correlation coefficient. It is also…

Over the last twenty years, education researchers have increasingly conducted randomised experiments with the goal of informing the decisions of educators and policymakers. Such experiments have generally employed broad, consequential, standardised outcome measures in the hope that this would allow decisionmakers to compare effectiveness of…

As online learning platforms become more ubiquitous throughout various curricula, there is a growing need to evaluate the effectiveness of these platforms and the different methods used to structure online education and tutoring. Towards this endeavor, some platforms have performed randomized controlled experiments to compare different user…

As online learning platforms become more ubiquitous throughout various curricula, there is a growing need to evaluate the effectiveness of these platforms and the different methods used to structure online education and tutoring. Towards this endeavor, some platforms have performed randomized controlled experiments to compare different user…

Theories regarding the long-term effects of educational interventions are often assumed, but rarely tested using experimental methods. In the following commentary, we argue that the shortage of randomized control trials with long-term follow-up presents serious problems for the field, as it hampers our ability to develop educational programs that…

Theories regarding the long-term effects of educational interventions are often assumed, but rarely tested using experimental methods. In the following commentary, we argue that the shortage of randomized control trials with long-term follow-up presents serious problems for the field, as it hampers our ability to develop educational programs that…

Personalized learning considers that the causal effects of a studied learning intervention may differ for the individual student. Making the inference about causal effects of studies interventions is a central problem. In this paper we propose the Residual Counterfactual Networks (RCN) for answering counterfactual inference questions, such as…

Field experiments in education frequently assign entire groups such as schools to treatment or control conditions. These experiments incorporate sometimes a longitudinal component where for example students are followed over time to assess differences in the average rate of linear change, or rate of acceleration. In this study, we provide methods…

Laptop computers have become commonplace in K-12 and college classrooms. With that, educators now face a critical decision. Should they embrace computers and put technology at the center of their instruction? Should they allow students to decide for themselves whether to use computers during class? Or should they ban screens altogether and embrace…

Cluster randomized experiments are ubiquitous in modern education research. Although a variety of modeling approaches are used to analyze these data, perhaps the most common methodology is a normal mixed effects model where some effects, such as the treatment effect, are regarded as fixed, and others, such as the effect of group random assignment…

Questions regarding the generalizability of results from educational experiments have been at the forefront of methods development over the past five years. This work has focused on methods for estimating the effect of an intervention in a well-defined inference population (e.g., Tipton, 2013; O'Muircheartaigh and Hedges, 2014); methods for…

Understanding the effects of class size reduction (CSR) has been an enduring issue in education. For the past 3 decades, Project STAR has stimulated research and policy discussions regarding the effects of CSR on a variety of outcomes. Schanzenbach (2007) reviewed STAR studies and concluded that small classes improved student academic outcomes.…

Experimental evaluations that involve the educational system usually involve a hierarchical structure (students are nested within classrooms that are nested within schools, etc.). Concerns about contamination, where research subjects receive certain features of an intervention intended for subjects in a different experimental group, have often led…

The authors present results from a comprehensive field experiment at Swiss high schools in which they compare the effectiveness of teaching methods in economics. They randomly assigned classes into an experimental and a conventional teaching group, or a control group that received no specific instruction. Both teaching treatments improve economic…

As evidence-based reform becomes increasingly important in educational policy, it is becoming essential to understand how research design might contribute to reported effect sizes in experiments evaluating educational programs. The purpose of this study was to examine how methodological features such as types of publication, sample sizes, and…